Sales automation uses software to eliminate repetitive, manual tasks and automates them to allow you and your sales team to focus more on closing sales and getting paid.
With sales automation tools, you can:
- Automate follow-ups
- Manage your sales pipeline
- Easily train new sales team members with a repeatable and scalable system
- Send invoices and payment reminders to clients to get paid without the awkward conversations
When combined with marketing automation, your sales automation software becomes an even more powerful tool that allows you to win more time back while growing your business.
Keep reading to explore more about what sales automation is or skip ahead:
- How to Use Online Sales Automation for Small Business
- Integrating Sales Automation into a CRM
- Find the Best Sales Automation Software
Automated Sales Funnels
Your sales funnel is the series of steps that prospects need to take to become a paying customer. The stages in each company’s sales funnel can differ, but the main three are:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision
By leveraging a sales automation platform like Keap, you can create a flywheel effect that brings in new leads and takes them through to the decision stage, automatically.
How Does Sales Process Automation Work?
Here are sales automation examples for how to simplify each stage of your funnel:
Awareness
The goal here is to create some sort of asset that captures the attention of your target audience. And, most importantly, you want to get their email address. One of the best ways to accomplish this is to create a lead magnet, like an e-book or templates that someone can use. The content will live behind a form on a landing page, where prospects will need to enter their information before accessing it.
Don’t forget that your lead magnet needs to relate to your product or service. For example, if you work for a design software company, your lead magnet should relate to design to ensure you’re attracting the right kinds of leads.
Consideration
At this point, you’ll have leads in your funnel and you’ll have all their email addresses. Set up an automated email nurture series to send at a regular interval so you can continue to be top of mind and can educate leads on your offering. Don’t be too pushy or overly sales-y at this point — there is a time for that later on.
You'll also know your leads are interested in content, so your first one or two emails could point them to blog posts on a similar topic. Then, the third and fourth emails could start to introduce them to your product, sharing a high-level overview of the benefits.
Decision
Now is the time to close the deal. Your leads have shown interest in your content and have gone through your entire nurture series. Your final email in the series should be the hard sell and should include something to close the deal, like a product demo, free consultation, or special discount. This example of sales automation won’t work for everyone, so if some leads don’t convert, you could create a separate nurture sequence specifically for them and check back in six months with another offer.